"I was born in Kansas City, Kansas on November 7, 1943 and grew up in the small, rural community of Tonganoxie, Kansas. When I entered the University of Kansas in the fall of 1961 I enrolled as a history major, with vague intentions of continuing into legal training. After two years in the general education system I entered into the Bachelor of Fine Arts program in the Drawing and Painting Department. I graduated in 1967 with an emphasis in Printmaking. The next fall I enrolled as a graduate student at Tyler School of Art, in Philadelphia, PA. While in graduate school I found that my interests were primarily in the three dimensional areas and changed my major emphasis to sculpture I received my Master of Fine Arts degree in the spring of 1972. The next fall I accepted a teaching position at the University of Minnesota, Morris. In 1976 I relocated to Texas and re-entered the teaching profession at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, where I am Emeritus Professor of Sculpture. I maintain my residence and studio in Houston." Meredith "Butch" Jack died on June 28, 2024. Artist Statement"Because of my construction background, I have always considered myself a fabricator; a welder with a bit of blacksmithing thrown in. However, through my teaching activities I have come to have an academic reputation as a ferrous temperature foundryman. Aesthetically, my work has always been abstract, although not always non-objective, regardless of medium. I tend to work in series, because I have found that as I make decisions regarding a piece there are always alternative decisions that are just as interesting. Each piece generates a half dozen others. Usually I do not work from drawings or maquettes; however most three dimensional series have an accompanying two dimensional series. I begin from a vague notion that this part should go with that part and will look sort of like this, but I’m never certain until I have done it. The process of discovery is the enjoyment of making, if I knew exactly what something was going to look like when it was finished, I probably wouldn’t make it."